Author: rvingwithapurpose

Sunday, April 3, 2022

Last Saturday we returned to Laurel, MS to assist with the Restore Jones County efforts to complete the rebuilding of homes from the December 2019 and April 2020 (Easter) tornadoes.  As you may remember we have worked here twice before, Spring 2021 and Fall 2021.  We joined the NOMADS team already in place, for our transition week.  One other couple joined for this week as well – brand new NOMADS on their first project, Tami and Craig.  It was great getting to know them and we look forward to working with them again soon!  We also had Suzanne as leader, and Charley and Joe and Les on our team.  We all worked on the house that we ended with last fall.  On our last day last fall we did some demo on this house.  Since then, there has a lot of work done by plumbers, electricians, and drywall people.  Most of the flooring has also been installed.  The team spent most of the week installing doors, trimming around the doors, installing baseboards, completing the installation of the vinyl plank flooring and caulking.  The doors were the major challenge as there are no two doors the same and there are no standard door sizes in the house.  Everything has been a custom build and very tedious.

Max and Anne were pulled from that location for Wednesday and Thursday, to work on one of the houses the Mennonite’s built.  Unfortunately, the person installing the stove scratched the flooring when moving the stove across the room.  We had to remove damaged planks that spanned about two thirds of the room.  The removal went fairly easily, but, reinstalling was considerably more difficult.  By the end of the day Thursday, we were celebrating the completion of the flooring as well as the re-installing the base and caulking.  All that remains is to touchup the paint on the lower walls just above the baseboard and the baseboard itself.  It was a successful week with much accomplished.

We had our traditional Thursday evening dinner with the team and then said our goodbyes because everyone was leaving Friday.   Friday we made a quick trip back to Alabama to have Max’s sutures removed and check on Aunt Helen’s house and then back to Laurel.  We left at 4:15am and were back in Laurel by 3:30pm.

Saturday we welcomed Anne and Dale, Sandy and Steve, and Stel and Jodi to Laurel.  Sunday the rest of our team, Jim and Dee, and Dave and Deb arrived.  We are looking forward to another great week with this fun group of hard working NOMADS.

Saturday, March 26, 2022

Just letting you know that after about three weeks in Alabama working on estate stuff we are back in the field getting ready to start back to work with other NOMADS with Restore Jones County in Mississippi.  It feels good to be back here.

Wednesday, March 9, 2022

Our last week at the Florida United Methodist Children’s Home was another busy one for our NOMADS team.  The two of us began the week working at one of the independent living cottages.  There had been a roof leak which had been repaired but the interior water damage also needed to be repaired.  We tackled that project and repaired the ceilings and walls in the two bathrooms involved.  After the drywall repairs dried we also painted.  While we were doing that, others were repairing fences, pressure washing sidewalks, painting in another cottage and running plumbing and wiring for the greenhouse.  Wednesday and Thursday, we went back to the outdoor chapel with Phil and Mary and ran the wiring in the ditch and installed the conduit for the outdoor worship center.

The high point of the week was Thursday morning.  We had our closing devotion and communion at the new outdoor chapel.  It was the first service and Diane, one of our team members who is a retired pastor, did a great job with the service.  Thanks, Diane!

Thursday at lunch the maintenance crew provided us some wonderful fried chicken and fixin’s as we closed out our time in Enterprise.  It was a great three weeks with another fun and hard working team!  May all the work that was done be a blessing to the children and young people that will pass through the Children’s Home.

Saturday, February 26, 2022

Monday morning after devotion we, along with Mary and Phil, returned to our outdoor chapel project.  At the end of the day last Thursday we had 2 rows of benches installed.  Monday we resumed with the layout of the third row, used the gas powered auger to dig six more holes, stacked cribbing to be used to support the benches while we used the fork lift to lift the benches and place the legs in the holes.   Then we mixed up some concrete and poured it in the holes.  It’s a very tedious work to be sure all the holes are placed in exactly the correct place, left/right, front to back, plum and level all the way across.  It took us a day each to complete each of the remaining rows this week.  Of course, there was also tear down, clean up to do each day since we had to leave everything secure each evening.  For safety and security of the children we secured anything that might could be used as a weapon by an upset, confused resident.  We also had some landscaping to do.  We completed all the benches Wednesday afternoon.

After some final cleanup work we moved to the greenhouse project after lunch Thursday and helped to pull some very heavy gauge wire through some buried conduit for close to 200 feet – a lot of heavy wire.  The wire was tied to a rope that we pulled through the conduit by attaching the rope to the forks of the forklift and then raising the forks as high as they would safely extend.  Then lower the forks back down, tighten up the rope and lift again – many times before finally pulling the wire out of the conduit at the panel beside the greenhouse.

Our outdoor chapel crew then went back to help with the setting of a 30′ concrete light pole for the chapel area.  David, supervisor of the maintenance department, along with several of his employees did most of the tractor and forklift work to get that huge hole dug and the pole set.  We assisted with the concrete and filling of the hole once they had it where they wanted it.  They left the tractor holding the pole in place for the night.  With that our work week was over.

It was another productive and fun week.  Other team members worked on electrical for the greenhouse, painted, pressure washed and several other things but again we don’t have pictures of that since we were not involved.  We are still hoping to gather some of those pictures before the end of the project.

Friday as another day for fun.  Mary and Phil invited us to visit the Circle B Bar Reserve with them.  It’s about 90 miles from the children’s home, in Lakeland, FL, but took about two hours to drive due to really heavy traffic getting through Orlando.  It was worth the time!  Such an amazing place.  Over 1,200 acres of former cattle ranch on the shores of Lake Hancock.  There are several distinct ecosystems that are available for hiking or biking.  We saw way too many alligators to count from very small to VERY large.  The one that decided to cross our trail as we approached, not looking at the trail but at the osprey eating a fish in a tree overhead, was the one that really got our attention.  He was a big guy.  Not the biggest we saw but the larger ones were not nearly as close.  The are many birds to photograph such as osprey, eagles, red shouldered hawks, storks, cranes, woodpeckers, herons and many others.  There are turtles and frogs and snakes (did not see any snakes), beautiful live oaks covered in Spanish moss, wetlands, and plains.  All of this and much more and it is free and open to the public seven days a week.  Amazing place we hope to return to next time we are in the area.  We would spend a week there and not see it all.

We ended the day with a family zoom with Anne’s cousins on the Richardson side.  It was a nice way to end another day and week in Florida.  May God continue to protect you all.  Until next week….